Is Google Ruining Your Memory?

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Is Google Ruining Your Memory?

By now, you've probably heard about this smart study showing that Google is making you stupid, led by Betsy Sparrow at Columbia. The scientists demonstrated that the availability of the internet is changing the nature of what we remember, making us more likely to recall where the facts are rather than the facts themselves. Patricia Cohen of the Times summarizes the results:

Dr. Sparrow and her collaborators, Daniel M. Wegner of Harvard and Jenny Liu of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, staged four different memory experiments. In one, participants typed 40 bits of trivia — for example, “an ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain” — into a computer. Half of the subjects believed the information would be saved in the computer; the other half believed the items they typed would be erased.

The subjects were significantly more likely to remember information if they thought they would not be able to find it later. “Participants did not make the effort to remember when they thought they could later look up the trivia statement they had read,” the authors write.

A second experiment was aimed at determining whether computer accessibility affects precisely what we remember. “If asked the question whether there are any countries with only one color in their flag, for example,” the researchers wrote, “do we think about flags — or immediately think to go online to find out?”

In this case, participants were asked to remember both the trivia statement itself and which of five computer folders it was saved in. The researchers were surprised to find that people seemed better able to recall the folder.

The headlines are already emphasizing the amnesiac effects of the internet, as if Google were a pox on the hippocampus. The scientists themselves are mostly sanguine about the data, noting that humans have been relying on "transactive memory" ever since the invention of language. It's just that, for most of human history, the only other reliable sources of information were other people. What these experiments reveal is that we treat the search engine like a particularly clever friend, a buddy with a gift for factoids and trivia. Here are the scientists:

These results suggest that processes of human memory are adapting to the advent of new computing and communication technology. Just as we learn through transactive memory who knows what in our families and offices, we are learning what the computer “knows” and when we should attend to where we have stored information in our computer-based memories. We are becoming symbiotic with our computer tools, growing into interconnected systems that remember less by knowing information than by knowing where the information can be found.

What interests me about this study is the way it reveals the bounded nature of memory. Although we like to think of our cortical hard drive as infinite in capacity, it's actually pretty constrained, which is why we're always looking for ways to not remember stuff. If we know that a fact is only a Google away, then we're not going to waste precious synaptic space on it. Better to let a server remember.

I think it's also worth pointing out that, although we've been romanticizing human memory ever since Socrates, our recall is profoundly flawed. I've written before about the process of memory reconsolidation, but I think it's worth repeating in this context. Every time we recall a memory we also remake it, subtly tweaking the neuronal details. (This is why the more we remember something, the less accurate the memory becomes.) Although we like to think of our memories as being immutable impressions, somehow separate from the act of remembering them, they aren’t. A memory is only as real as the last time you remembered it.

Why do we engage in reconsolidation and reconstruction? One theory is that reconsolidation helps ensure our memories are kept up to date, interpreted in light of recent experience. The brain has no interest in immaculate recall - it's only interested in the past to the extent it helps us make sense of the future. By having memories that constantly change, we ensure that the memories stored inside our mental file cabinets are mostly relevant.

Of course, reconsolidation theory poses problems for the fidelity of memory. Although our memories always feel true - like a literal recording of the past - they're mostly not, since they're always being edited and bent by what we think now. And now. And now. (See the work of Elizabeth Loftus for more on memory inaccuracy.)

And this is where the internet comes in. One of the virtues of transactive memory is that it acts like a fact-check, helping ensure we don't all descend into selfish solipsism. By sharing and comparing our memories, we can ensure that we still have some facts in common, that we all haven't disappeared down the private rabbit hole of our own reconsolidations. In this sense, instinctually wanting to Google information - to not entrust trivia to the fallible brain - is a perfectly healthy impulse. (I've used Google to correct my errant memories thousands of times.) I don't think it's a sign that technology is rotting our cortex - I think it shows that we're wise enough to outsource a skill we're not very good at. Because while the web enables all sorts of other biases - it lets us filter news, for instance, to confirm what we already believe - the use of the web as a vessel of transactive memory is mostly virtuous. We save hard drive space for what matters, while at the same time improving the accuracy of recall.

If a fact stored externally were the same as a memory of that fact stored in our mind, then the loss of internal memory wouldn't much matter. But external storage and biological memory are not the same thing. When we form, or "consolidate," a personal memory, we also form associations between that memory and other memories that are unique to ourselves and also indispensable to the development of deep, conceptual knowledge. The associations, moreover, continue to change with time, as we learn more and experience more. As Emerson understood, the essence of personal memory is not the discrete facts or experiences we store in our mind but "the cohesion" which ties all those facts and experiences together. What is the self but the unique pattern of that cohesion?